Suchergebnisse

Dalit life-writings have often been identified as reified spaces of protest against the Brahmanic oppression continuing since centuries in the Indian society. Banished to a space of invisibility, both metaphorical as well as physical margins of the Social Imaginary, Dalits continue to push back boundaries by transforming the 'marginal' space into a space of 'subaltern resistance'. My aim in this paper is to interrogate the methods of collective resistance in the life-writings of Dalit women authors and show how the peripheral spatial geography becomes the central site of resistance. Both Baby Kamble's The Prisons we Broke (2008), and Bama's Karukku (1992) belong to entirely different historical periods, and therefore, inevitably differ in their plot-narratives and manner of expression. However, they converge in their emphasis on how the Dalit segregated spaces in their village assume an important role in awakening their collective consciousness first – as members of a community, and second – as women. Both Karukku and The Prisons We Broke refuse to adhere to the Augustinian definitions of the autobiography as a genre and instead become works which elude generic conventions of the autobiography, anticipating a separate literary genre for themselves. In fact, the closest literary referent of these texts is the Latin American genre of the testimonio - social and political narratives of witnessing significant events as a collective - that emerged in the 1960s. Reading these Dalit life-writings as testimonios of collective resistance is evocative of the on-going struggle of the Dalits to claim a separate space, both social and literary, while lending a voice to their lived-experiences in a paternalistic society that is essentially casteist. Baby Kamble and Bama raise pertinent questions against the dominant religious ideology and contribute to a social change in the conditions of women. Thus, my second intention in the paper is to closely look at the resistance offered against religious bias by the two authors. Since the Indian caste system derives its justifications from the Hindu law of divinity that are apparently inalterable according to Hindu purists, challenging the 'savarna' customs and rituals has been a persistent preoccupation within Dalit activism. Foregrounding textual instances of such challenges and resistance shall help us in understanding how a society practices coercion against a community when it comes to something as benign and as personal as man's spiritual connection with the divine force.

Abstract: Autobiography can be thought of as, among other things, a speech of defence. The Estonian-Finnish author Hella Wuolijoki started writing her autobiography in prison and it very much reads as a legitimization of her political life choices. The article investigates how Wuolijoki depicts her own politicization, and how she plays with different author names in order to destabilize a taken-for-granted author position. The material used is her three part autobiography/memoirs, in which she explicitly declares that she is less interested in the facts of her life, but rather wants to keep them in their original memory-form. This gives her the freedom to recount events she deems important for her self-formation, rather than events or general interest. Feminist and autobiographical theory is used as a tool to investigate how dislodging the authorial position can open new ways of emphasising a woman's political development. Thus, the literary formation of a political and feminist persona can be studied through her works. In this article I relate Wuolijoki's writing to a way of theorizing the position of the political woman that could be found in Alexandra Kollontai's pamphlet on the socialist New Woman written in 1918. The article analyses how Wuolijoki legitimizes her political activities by recounting her life as always intricately connected to contemporary political events. The article shows that political autobiography is a concept that can open new perspectives on women's life writing and that the construction of an autobiographical persona that combines the concepts of woman and political may rely, as in this case, on types or models found in literature rather than life. Swedish: Självbiografi kan ses som, bland annat, ett försvarstal. Den estnisk-finska författaren Hella Wuolijoki började skriva sin självbiografi i fängelset för att legitimera sina politiska livsval. Artikeln undersöker hur Wuolijoki skildrar sin egen politisering och hur hon leker med olika författarnamn för att destabilisera en förgivet tagen författarposition. Det analyserade materialet utgörs av hennes självbiografi/memoarer i tre band i vilka hon explicit deklarerar att hon är mindre intresserad av fakta och snarare vill behålla händelserna så som hon minns dem. Detta ger henne friheten att behandla skeenden som hon anser viktiga för sin egen formering snarare än sådant som kan vara av allmänintresse. Feministisk och självbiografisk teori används som ett verktyg för att undersöka hur förskjutningen av författarens ställning kan öppna nya sätt att betona en kvinnas politiska utveckling. I artikeln jämför jag Wuolijokis skrivande med Alexandra Kollontajs sätt att teoretisera den nya kvinnan i pamfletten den socialistiska Nya Kvinnan från 1918. Artikeln analyserar hur Wuolijoki legitimerar sina politiska aktiviteter genom att ständigt relatera till samtida politiska händelser. Artikeln visar att en läsning ur ett politiskt självbiografiskt perspektiv kan öppna för nya perspektiv för kvinnors life-writing och att konstruktionen av ett självbiografiskt persona som kombinerar begreppen kvinna och politik, åtminståne i det här fallet, är beroende av typer och modeller som finns i skönlitteraturen snarare än livet.

This paper examines the shifting paradigms of language used in HIV/AIDS life writing. As a testimonial genre, military metaphors have played a crucial role in mobilising communities and revealing how discourses around chronic illness inscribe themselves on the body. Through a textual analysis of three memoirs, Douglas Wright's Ghost Dance (2004) and Terra Incognito (2006), and David Caron's The Nearness of Others (2014), I argue that these texts represent a shift that instead engage metaphors of terrorism and security to convey meaning of lived experience and negotiate the precariousness of ongoing survival. Simultaneously, Wright and Caron maintain their health through protease inhibitors and reflect on the national anxieties produced by the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America. Both writers draw on the language of terrorism, especially the images taken from the Abu Ghraib prison, to inform their own experiences as HIV-positive white, middle-upper class, gay men. The significance of these metaphors can be found in their individual struggles with depression. What this paper contributes to is an understanding of what it means to think about HIV after the pharmaceutical turn when HIV is no longer considered a death sentence in the Western world, how discourses of terror inform public and personal understandings of chronic illness and mental health, and how embodied experience informs autobiographical modes of expression, and vice versa.

Tutkimus käsittelee kolmen pakistanilaisen naisen omaelämäkerrallisia tekstejä jälkikoloniaalisesta, materialistis-feministisestä teoreettisesta näkökulmasta. Se kartoittaa naisten tapoja kirjoittaa uudelleen Pakistanin poliittista historiaa, ajoittaa sen merkkihetkiä ja niiden vaihtoehtoisia varjotapahtumia, joita yksi tutkittavista, Sara Suleri, kutsuu varjodynastioiksi. Paikoitellen varjotapahtumat johtavat karnevalistiseen kuvaukseen yksityisistä aisti-iloista, mutta ne voivat myös tuottaa strategisia muistinmenetyksiä ja hiljaisuuksia. Tutkimustekstien kriittisimmät ajanjaksot ovat vuoden 1971 Bangladeshin itsenäistymisen jälkeinen kansallinen kriisitila ja vuosien 1977-88 Zia ul-Haqin sotilasdiktatuurin aika. Bangladeshin sotaan liittyy aktiivisen vastarinnan, häpeän ja elämää suojelevan hiljaisuuden momentteja. Episodi kiteytyy vereksi ja lihaksi bengalilaissyntyisen Begum Shaista Ikramullah n kieltäytymisessä kirjoittaa koko sodasta ja sitä seuraavassa kahden vuosikymmenen kirjallisessa tauossa. Vuodet 1977-88 olivat Benazir Bhutton vankilatuomioiden, maastapaon ja maanalaisen poliittisen toiminnan yliopisto, mutta jakso synnytti myös maan ensimmäisen valtakunnallisen naisliikkeen protestina naisia sortavaa islamilaista lainsäädäntöä vastaan. Benazir Bhutton henkilöhahmossa tiivistyi maan feministien tulevaisuuden toivo, mutta hän ei valtaan päästyään saavuttanut naisliikkeen esittämiä tavoitteita. Tutkittavat kolme naista eivät pelkästään kuvaa kansallisia kriisejä ja ääritilanteita, vaan kutsuvat lukijansa osallistumaan Pakistanin ylemmän keskiluokan ja eliitin arkeen. Heille yliopistokoulutus ja julkinen ura eivät ole olleet pitkän taistelun lopputulos, vaan jotain, jota heidän luokka-asemansa on mahdollistanut ja jopa jotain, jota heiltä on odotettu. Työ johdattelee lukijansa naisten vallan käytäville politiikassa ja yliopistomaailmassa, mutta samalla muistuttaa tekstien toisista , suuresta pakistanilaisesta nais- ja miesenemmistöstä, jotka eivät kirjoita omaelämäkertoja. Millaisia luokka- ja sukupuoliulottuvuuksia luku- ja kirjoitustaidolla, koulutuksella ja kirjallisella toiminnalla on jälkikoloniaalisessa Pakistanin kansallisvaltiossa? Kenelle tutkimani tekstit ovat tärkeitä samastumisen ja voimistamisen lähteitä? Mikä on tekstien materiaalinen konteksti ja millaista elämää ne ovat eläneet toisten käsissä julkaisunsa jälkeen? Mitkä ovat itse tekstien varjodynastiat? Muistin ja tunteiden politiikka viittaa odotusten ja pettymysten, toivon ja epätoivon väliseen dialektiikkaan, jota on havaittavissa kaikissa poliittisissa kulttuureissa. Omaelämäkerrallisissa teksteissä poliittisuus on jotain vapaasti luettavissa ja tulkittavissa olevaa: lukija voi päättää osallistumisensa tason ja intensiteetin. Lukukokemus on kohtaaminen, jolla voi olla laajojakin eettisiä ja maailmanpoliittisia seurauksia. Henkilöhistorian lisäksi omaelämäkertoja voi pitää kutsuina opiskelemaan tekstien poliittista, kulttuurista ja historiallista kontekstia. Metodologiset valinnat pohjautuvat mm. Edward Saidin ajatukseen kontrapunktisesta luennasta ja Teresa de Lauretisin feministisen uudelleenkirjoittamisen ehdotukseen. Kontrapunktien etsiminen merkitsee pakistanilaisten naisten tekstien lukemista yhdessä ja ristiin esimerkiksi muiden eteläaasialaisten tai muslimimaiden naiskirjailijoiden kanssa, maailman tuomista sisään yhteen kansalliseen kontekstiin. Feministinen uudelleenkirjoitus merkitsee globaalien ja paikallisten valtarakenteiden kriittistä tarkastelua niiden sisältä. Se avaa myös mahdollisuuden fiktiivisten ilmaisumuotojen sisällyttämiseen tutkimustekstiin. Työ kutsuu pohtimaan feministitutkijan osallisuutta ja toimijuutta toisten naisten omaelämäkertojen ja kulttuurien varjostajana. Fiktiivisten tyylikeinojen käyttö ei ole vain esteettinen valinta, vaan pyrkimys antaa sanoja kokemuksille ja tunteille, joita on vaikea tavoittaa akateemisen kirjoittamisen konventioiden kautta. ; The study explores three Pakistani women's life-writing from a postcolonial, materialist-feminist theoretical perspective. It maps women's ways to rewrite the country's political history and to locate its key episodes and their counterpoints, or what one of the researched, Sara Suleri, calls shadow dynasties, in historical time. In other words, the three women do not only portray national triumphs, crises and emergencies but invite the readers to participate in the everyday life of the Pakistani political élite and upper middle class. The study invites its readers to enter the corridors of women's power in politics and academic life, but it also reminds them of the texts' "others", the great majority of Pakistani women and men who do not publish autobiographical texts. In other words, what kinds of gender and class dimensions do literacy, education and literary activities have in the postcolonial Islamic Republic of Pakistan? What are the texts' shadow dynasties? Methodologically, I rely on Edward Said's idea of contrapuntal reading and Teresa de Lauretis' strategic suggestion for feminist rewriting. The study looks for counterpoints to the women's texts from women writers in other Muslim countries and South Asia and thus attempts to bring the world into a local, national context. Feminist rewriting means the analysis of global and local power relations from the inside. The study narrates the feminist researcher's postcolonial complicity and agency in front of other women's life-writing from other cultural spheres. What kinds of global and local political effects can a cross-cultural study of life-writing have in the present conjuncture?

Media depictions of Arabs and Muslims continue to be framed by images of camels, belly dancers, and dagger-wearing terrorists. But do only Hollywood movies and TV news have the power to frame public discourse? This interdisciplinary study transfers media framing theory to literary studies to show how life writing (re-)frames Orientalist stereotypes. The innovative analysis of the post-9/11 autobiographies »West of Kabul, East of New York«, »Letters from Cairo«, and »Howling in Mesopotamia« makes a powerful claim to approach literature based on a theory of production and reception, thus enhancing the multi-disciplinary potential of framing theory.

Media depictions of Arabs and Muslims continue to be framed by images of camels, belly dancers, and dagger-wearing terrorists. But do only Hollywood movies and TV news have the power to frame public discourse? This interdisciplinary study transfers media framing theory to literary studies to show how life writing (re-)frames Orientalist stereotypes. The innovative analysis of the post-9/11 autobiographies 'West of Kabul, East of New York', 'Letters from Cairo', and 'Howling in Mesopotamia' makes a powerful claim to approach literature based on a theory of production and reception, thus enhancing the multi-disciplinary potential of framing theory.

Media depictions of Arabs and Muslims continue to be framed by images of camels, belly dancers, and dagger-wearing terrorists. But do only Hollywood movies and TV news have the power to frame public discourse? This interdisciplinary study transfers media framing theory to literary studies to show how life writing (re-)frames Orientalist stereotypes. The innovative analysis of the post-9/11 autobiographies »West of Kabul, East of New York«, »Letters from Cairo«, and »Howling in Mesopotamia« makes a powerful claim to approach literature based on a theory of production and reception, thus enhancing the multi-disciplinary potential of framing theory.

Media depictions of Arabs and Muslims continue to be framed by images of camels, belly dancers, and dagger-wearing terrorists. But do only Hollywood movies and TV news have the power to frame public discourse? This interdisciplinary study transfers media framing theory to literary studies to show how life writing (re- )frames Orientalist stereotypes. The innovative analysis of the post-9/11 autobiographies »West of Kabul, East of New York±, »Letters from Cairo±, and »Howling in Mesopotamia± makes a powerful claim to approach literature based on a theory of production and reception, thus enhanci

Media depictions of Arabs and Muslims continue to be framed by images of camels, belly dancers, and dagger-wearing terrorists. But do only Hollywood movies and TV news have the power to frame public discourse? This interdisciplinary study transfers media framing theory to literary studies to show how life writing (re-)frames Orientalist stereotypes. The innovative analysis of the post-9/11 autobiographies "West of Kabul, East of New York", "Letters from Cairo", and "Howling in Mesopotamia" makes a powerful claim to approach literature based on a theory of production and reception, thus enhancing the multi-disciplinary potential of framing theory.

Situated at the intersection between medical humanities, aging studies, autobiographical studies, disability studies and ethic studies, this book explores the fascination of centenarians' autobiographies for humanites research. It can be argued that the growing presence of centenarians' autobiographies on book markets across the globe may by rooted in the public's desire for positive images of aging, in contrast to the image of inevitable decay.

3.1 Children as Victims or Agents: Culpability3.2 Beah's Advocacy in the Context of Consumerism; 3.3 Jal's Hip Hop Music and the Gospel of Rights; 3.4 Child Soldiers as New Heroes of Pop Culture; 4 Human Trafficking and Crimes against Minorities; 4.1 From Victimhood to Spectacular Survival; 4.2 Fashion and Mam's Abolition of Sex Slavery; 4.3 Bashir's Reluctant Advocacy for Darfur; 4.4 Celebrity Activism within Geopolitical Agendas; Conclusion; List of Figures; List of Works Cited.

Collected essays on popular culture by a major critic.